Follow us

Ways your Mother lied to you about the Best Practices followed in Casinos

Casinos are business organizations that accommodate particular types of gambling activities. Casinos fall under the gaming industry are usually built in combination with hotels, restaurants, cruise ships, retail shopping sites or at any one of the major tourist attractions in that area. Casinos are one of the fast growing segments in the hospitality industry where a huge amount of cash exchanges hands daily. Hence, stringent internal control policies are very important, especially when dealing with cash flows.

Best Practices followed in Casinos

Best practices are techniques that are widely accepted as it generates outcomes by following a set of standard procedures. These are used to maintain quality and assess self against benchmark standards. Some of the important best practices followed at reputed casinos are listed below.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) practices

Gaming control regulators have recently added many non-traditional industries including casinos under the scrutiny and fines list. One such method implemented is the anti-money laundering or AML best practices that are relevant to gaming organizations. The American Gaming Association (AGA), in December 2014, released an article on "Best Practices for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance". AML practices are put in place to monitor money-laundering activities, to detect suspicious actions, to manage customer experience and operational costs, to prevent terrorism financing and to avert potential risks.

Internal Control practices

As per regulations, all casinos must establish a system of internal controls over the casino structure, accounting processes, authorisation procedures, record keeping, assets safeguarding, and financial records maintenance, all according to the generally accepted accounting principles. This practice of internal control forms the Minimum Internal Control Standards (MICS) for casinos.

Surveillance and Security policies

Casinos are places that handle huge traffic and bulk cash dealings. Hence, it is mandatory to install low profile surveillance to ensure security. Different varieties of covert surveillance are available these days including pinhole cameras (used in signage and fixtures), discreet cameras and omni-directional or 360-degree cameras to assist the security staff force and the local police to rightly identify any suspicious activities and individuals on the property and around the vicinity. All devices that call for good surveillance must possess the following characteristics:

Easy storage

Non-intrusive

Clear images without being affected by surrounding interferences

Of all the places, the three important focus oriented areas that require strict surveillance are:

Points of entry: Eye-level surveillance at entry points to monitor movements at all times.

Cashier cabins: Surveillance of the highest order is required here to prevent fraudulent activities.

ATM centres: Cameras must be active not only during transactions but also during any movement in and around the ATMs.

Protection of Minors policy

No reputed casinos allow children to gamble. There is a strict policy that any individual who is under the age of 18 years are not allowed to stay in casinos or in any sort of betting shops. They are prohibited from gambling and are not even permitted to use the gambling machines.

Good Marketing practices

Good marketing techniques are required to maintain current client relationship and to attract new customers. For this, casinos provide loyalty program to its patrons. These rewards program will help the casinos to identify the spending habits of its customers and hence can target them better by sending them promotional emails.

Casinos also provide a wide range of bonuses including welcome bonuses, free spins, cash bonuses, reload bonuses, refer a friend and more. Of late, many casinos are providing free time bonuses that are a type of marketing techniques to introduce the customers to new games introduced at the casinos. Also, the ‘refer a friend’ program is currently a trending technique in casinos.